Not a Fish

I’ve been following some really weird stuff that’s been happening in Britain recently, if one is to believe the newspapers there.

There’s the one about the two non-Muslim kids (aged 11 and 12) who got detention at their non-Muslim school for refusing to pray a Muslim prayer to Allah.

And there’s the one about Dundee Police who issued an apology to Muslims for putting the photo of a cute little nasty unclean puppy on a postcard.

The latest is that British sniffer dogs will wear little booties when they search Muslim households for ammunition and narcotics, so as not to defile the Muslim homes of suspected terrorists and drug dealers.

So I’m following all this with some amusement, while all the time trying to remember something about the dog thing. Suddenly the penny drops. Sinai!

Of course!

When I was a child we used to go camping in Nuweiba every year in Succot. A sort of family reenactment of the Israelites’ desert dwelling. It was still Israeli territory at the time, before Sadat came to visit. We used to pack the whole apartment (more or less) on the roof rack and just head down. It was great fun.

As a child I was fascinated by the little Bedouin girls.

I was less enamoured by the Bedouin dogs. Yes, THEIR DOGS! You heard me.

They all had dogs. The Muslim Arab Bedouin had dogs. Loads of them. Really nasty dogs. I was terrified of them.

I mentioned this to Bish and he said, “Of course. The Arabs even have a special breed of dogs”.

So I googled. And lo and behold - the Saluki, none other than the detested Bedouin dog of my childhood trips to Sinai. Apparently it’s a hunter breed, perhaps that’s why I found them so growly and unpleasant. They weren’t reared to be nice, cuddly pets.

Bish points out that there are always loads of dogs roaming round in Arab villages in Israel and the Territories. They may not keep them in their living rooms (unless they are Bedouin owners of Saluki dogs, apparently), but they don’t get rid of them completely, as one would expect with such dangerously unclean creatures that might contaminate the children (who also roam around the streets pretty freely from quite a young age).

So what are the Muslims of Britain playing at? And why are the idiot (non-Muslim yet) Brits falling for it? The twerps.

Here are some nice photos of some Muslims with their dogs.

Update: I forgot to point out that even Muslim leaders in Britain think the British authorities are going too far with the dog issue:

Ibrahim Mogra, one of Britain’s leading imams, said the measures were unnecessary: “In Islamic law the dog is not regarded as impure, only its saliva is. Most Islamic schools of law agree on that. If security measures require to send a dog into a house, then it has to be done. “

So I can thank my lucky stars for encountering this deep meditation on Hebrew letters on youtube.com:

Apparently “This is a learning tool, and it is a meditation tool. Anyone can benefit from this simple repetition, level of experience makes no difference. This means that the most raw beginner or the most seasoned davvener have the same access to the Holy energy of Emanation contained in these sacred shapes and thought-forms.”

Holy energy of Emanation. Sacred shapes. Hmmm. Not idolatrous at all. What a thought. Imshin, shame on you.

To make amends for my sinful mindset, I have an offering to meditators. A simple and unique grocery list meditation, based on the original, ancient (well, from this last Friday) ImshinBish family grocery list straight from the holy source of the fridge door. Guaranteed to award you great benefits.

Come back tomorrow for my special offer red string nose rings.

Adloyada tells the tale of one Eva Figes, a Jewish lady of about my late mother’s age, apparently an acclaimed writer and famous feminist, who says all Israelis are filled with hate (among other things).

I am Israeli. Therefore, according to Eva Figes, I am filled with hate.

Luckily, I am not completely consumed by my hate and I still have room for other emotions. Right now the emotion I’m feeling is compassion for this Eva Figes. Even though I don’t know her at all, I have a feeling it is Eva Figes who is the one filled with hate.

naches.

Or this is what they’re always telling us. This is one of the main claims against the checkpoints. It’s like a mantra - “They don’t smuggle ammunition via checkpoints. They don’t smuggle ammunition via checkpoints”.

But what can one do when the apartheid wall security fence is actually working and the bombs just aren’t getting through to blow up Israeli civilians like they used to be?

Obviously, they have to try to get them through the checkpoints. The truth is they, in fact, do smuggle ammunition via checkpoints.

Ynet:

Palestinian caught with 6 pipe bombs at Nablus checkpoint

Soldiers manning Hawara checkpoint in West Bank apprehend 18-year-old carrying explosive devices, bullet cartridge and what appears to be gunpowder; checkpoint temporality closed

I’ve noticed there have been quite a few of these incidents lately. I wonder if the kind well-meaning ladies of Machsomwatch have noticed. I hope they don’t think the soldiers are infringing on the Palestinians’ rights to transport bombs around.

I fear some people don’t let the facts confuse them.

I’m sorry for the people who’s lives are made very difficult by the checkpoints in the West Bank. I suggest they take up their grievances with their unfriendly neighborhood terrorists. Not with us.

I say thank God and the IDF for the checkpoints, which are saving lives.

I’ve always been fascinated by the story of Ruth the Moabite, which we traditionally read on the festival of Shavuot, commencing tonight. I grew up in a street called Naomi Street which was the continuation of Ruth Street (besides being the name of Ruth’s mother-in-law), so I felt an affinity. We were almost family. And it helped that it was just about the most romantic story ever. Okay, so it’s not exactly a Romeo and Juliet story. She’s a young widow, a penniless foreigner with no prospects, and he’s an older man (in my imagination he’s, say, in his forties, around my age), an established pillar of society in the prime of life.

So anyway, recently I’ve stumbled on some dossi teachings about the Book of Ruth. Apparently, according to them, Boaz was not an older man, he was an OLD man. Far too old for a young widow. According to them, he was actually in his eighties, or thereabout, when he met Ruth, and no, he didn’t fall head over heels (what was I thinking?). He was only doing her a favor (yeah yeah yeah, the redemption thing, we know), no more.

Yeah right, who was doing who a favor? The dear old man, lifting her out of her widowhood and poverty.

So far all this can be seen as a legitimate interpretation of the story. Superfluous, annoying, but legitimate nevertheless. Just as I’d like too see Boaz as a forty year old, someone else can see him as eighty (especially if one is an eighty year-old oneself, and partial to young goyishke widows). The book doesn’t state his actual age, after all. And people usually speculate over why men and women with big age differences marry. Ruth doesn’t actually hide that she was marrying him for his money.

Not that any of these things would really have crossed my mind, if these guys hadn’t felt the need to point them all out.

But what really soured this simple, sweet story for me, was that the interpretation also tells us that the eighty year old Boaz kicked the bucket on their wedding night, right after he begat their mutual son.

Where did they get that from? And more importantly WHY must they point out such a thing? Why suck all the romance out of the story, right to the last bit? Why take all the simple loveliness out of it? (Why oh why make poor Ruth a widow again, before she even had time to enjoy married life?)

As I see it, the story is perfect as it is written. It doesn’t need explanations and embellishments.

They have a knack of doing this. I read in a learned book written by a certain learned rabbi, recommended by other learned rabbis (and which rapidly found its way into the bin) that that the rod Moses schlepped around the desert and later did miracles with, wasn’t just any old stick. It was extremely ancient and holy, specially carved out of something or other, with all sorts of holy words inscribed on it, and God himself had bestowed it on, was it Abraham, or was it Noah? And it had been handed down from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, etcetera, until Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, stole it from whichever Israelite in Egypt had it at that time. And that’s how Moses got his paws on it.

P-u-l-l-ease! It was a stick. A shepherds rod. Why all the mumbo jumbo?

So maybe they felt they had to dullify the story of Ruth so as to emphasize that her great grandson was David. Maybe they didn’t want the emphasis to be on Ruth and Boaz, and certainly not on her being - Heaven help us - a shikse.

But… but… but… isn’t it far nicer that David was the produce of a sweet, gentle love story?

Oh I forgot, the dossim aren’t too crazy about romantic love. Too exciting. Too spontaneous. Too dangerous.

I think I’ll just forget I ever heard that Boaz was literally on his deathbed when he met Ruth. I think I’ll just do a mental rewind and pretend I never read all that, thank you very much. I much prefer the good looking, imposing figure of the Boaz of my childhood imagination, who fell in love with the pretty goyishke-looking Ruth gathering the remains in the fields at harvest time.

Happy Shavuot everyone. Don’t eat too much cheesecake.

Update: Adloyada said:

Karen Alkalay-Gut’s poem is on her diary today:

BOAZ¹S MOTHER

Have you ever noticed I
am the only woman in the story
with no recognition? The Moabite
floozy on the threshing room floor
made her ex-
mother-in-law
famous, and provided for
for the rest of her life.

And me
The great
grand mother
of David

gets no visits
on Friday night

The rabbi at our shul gave a women-ony Shiur on the Ruth story and said the
midreshim actually claim Boaz was 100….

He met with some resistance from some of the audience, and answered one of them that it was not always a good idea to study Nach as it could lead to heresy. In terms of the late European diaspora, Israeli and reform
experience, that’s actually true. My take on it is that the issue isn’t that, but that it can if read literally and simplistically lead to cynicism–which is one of the most corrosive forces of our time, and one that I think is particularly problematic in Israeli secular society..

I disagree with her about Israeli secular cynicism. I don’t think we are. I think it’s our elites that are cynical, and they no longer represent us. I was just thinking about that today. It suddenly crossed my mind that we are a lot like the Israeli Arabs in that respect. We both have elites that do not represent our interests or understand what we want or need. And in both cases they could be pulling us down a road to ruin, against our wills.